Tag: coke

As a Marketer, I wish it wasn’t true. I am a huge fan of great Marketing and Coke has always been one of the best. Being a fan of Coke is likely how it feels for Manchester United fans to see your team fall to fifth place in the standings or Montreal Canadiens fans to see your team completely miss the playoffs. I hate seeing what’s happening with Coke.

I have heard a lot of Marketers suggest that Coke’s downfall is because “Coke is bad for you”. Of course it is bad for you. So is beer, chocolate and fast cars and yet those categories are going strong. Plus, when looking at a change in sales, you must look to see what has changed. We have known that Coke was bad for you for the past 15 years, yet from 2000 to 2014, Coke saw strong steady years of growth. Coke’s Marketing was bucking the underlying “health” trend that should be bringing them down.

If I invested $10,000 in Coke in 2005, it would have turned into $22,000 by 2014, significantly beating the stock market. However, 18 months later with declining sales trend, that $22,000 is still $22,000 and Coke is now in panic mode.

At Beloved Brands, we believe that Brands have to create aREPUTATION that connects quickly and lasts in the minds and hearts of the CONSUMER, generating a tight BOND, POWERand PROFIT, beyond what the product alone could achieve. From 2000 to 2014, Coke had been using a “Happiness” platform to make everyone feel good. It wasn’t the most strategic, but the execution was terrific. Cute polar bears, story-telling, names on labels, innovative viral ads. It was working. However, in the last 18 months, there appears to be a ton of confusion on what is the Coke reputation. This has led to lower consumer connectivity, driving lower sales and profits. At the beloved stage, the marketing effort has to shift to transforming your brand into an experience. Beloved brands create magic with the consumers, so they feel more and think less. When I look at what Coke has done with a new master brand strategy, new red cans for all brands and focusing on the product, I see a brand that is thinking more and feeling less. As a fan of Coke, they are now putting the brand at risk of becoming the next Kodak, Sony and General Motors. I hope they figure it out fast and get back to having fun.

To us, Marketing involves a process of THINK, PLAN, DECIDE, EXECUTE. The panic mode of facing declines has them thinking too much about the sales line and not enough about the reputation they manage with consumers. Some of the decisions they are making appear to be the wrong decisions and the panic mode has them on the wrong path. Let’s hope they can find their way.

2005-2015: The 3 things Coke did to keep the growth alive

We have known for a while that Coke was bad for us, yet we kept drinking it. It was fun moment to have with friends, a great thirst quencher on a hot summer day, and even a piece of American history in every bottle. Coke used amazing tactical executions to keep the brand alive in our hearts.

1. New Lifestyle machines turned Coke into an experience:

When I was a kid, it was so much fun to go up to the pop fountain and combine every flavour: a bit of Coke, a bit of Sprite and Orange or Root Beer and back to the coke for a bit more. But Coke’s new Freestyle machines took that to the level combining art, science, entertainment and design to give you up to 100 options to make the fountain drink of your choice. These machines, not only give you a drink, but a fun and very cool interactive experience. They make Coke magical and fun, keeping the love affair with Coke alive. This is helping consumers to feel more and think less.

2. Beautiful ads that made us feel good about ourselves:

Coke has done amazing advertising work for the past 80 years. They invented our visual of Santa and taught the world to sing. The best Coke ads aren’t filled with highly strategic messages but just great feelings. In so many focus groups, I have heard consumers say, “I love the Coke polar bear ads”. When I’d ask why, all anyone can ever say is “they make me feel good”. Coke really did a good job around the “share happiness” ads. Below is a great viral ad where a Coke machine gives out free Cokes and Pizza to College students. These ads are focused on getting consumers to feel more and think less.

3. Names on bottles that makes Coke seem very personal:

When I first saw names on cans and bottles, I was highly skeptical. As a Marketer, I thought about the painful logistics of inventory management. I forgot to think like a consumer. This is a very fun, light-hearted tactic for Coke, perfectly fitting with the share happiness brand idea. This program helps consumers to feel more and think less.

2015-2016: The 3 things Coke is doing to inhibit growth

1. Listing the calories as a positive feature on the bottles:

So we know Coke is bad for us. Many diets suggest never drink your calories. Coke is loaded with sugar. We all saw Coke fighting the New York mayor on portion sizes and we know they are fighting legislation on labelling standards. But now Coke trying to turn their 149 calories per can into a positive is one of the craziest ideas I have seen since McDonald’s told us their hamburgers use “real beef”. In a social media world, it has set up the brand to ridicule. (e.g. Coke has more calories than a Cinnabon). This type of feature is more about thinking and less about feeling.

2. You shouldn’t use a Master Brand strategy when you don’t have one master brand consumer:

Usually a master brand strategy works when you can build separate brands under the same idea and even cross-polinate consumers from product to product. However, Coke, Diet Coke and even Coke Zero have three distinct types of consumers. The new Coke master brand strategy feels like a complete force fit. The two sugar-free consumers would rarely if ever drink a real Coke. Now if it was 1981 and Coke decided to use a Master brand approach, maybe that would have worked. But 35 years later, they have THREE huge brands on their hands. In fact, Diet Coke is the #2 brand in the category next to Coke. In theory, the brand and the variant can go together. But in practice, bringing them together after the fact is extremely difficult. Just imagine if Microsoft decided to re-name the Xbox with Surface. High risk, no value move. Their new “Taste the Feeling” advertising campaign is all about SELLING MORE PRODUCT. It’s an OK spot, not a great spot. For a 90 second spot called “Anthem” it lacks the emotional appeal you would expect, and it won’t really generate any viral share-ability. In fact, it on has 650,000 YouTube views so far. It has a lot of product shots, but not really the connectivity needed to move product. And the Diet Coke branding is so bad that you could almost have a contest to spot the “Diet Coke”. This type of advertising is more about moving the feet and less about feeling.

3. New packaging is ugly and off-strategy:

First, I believe that packaging is one of Coke’s biggest strengths. Obviously, the red Coke has 100 years of heritage, and matches the heavy syrup taste of Coke. However, the Diet Coke silver/white package conveys a lighter taste than the red package, appealing mostly to women. The Coke Zero black package stood out in the grocery aisles and grabbed a higher share of the male consumer looking for a sugar-free option. Having three separate packages for three different consumers is a smart strategy. The only explanation I have heard for this type of packaging is “Brand Blocking”. You’re joking right? Coke is already a dominant brand in a huge aisle of the grocery section. Having all red will actually hurt them on the shelf as it will be confusing for the separate customers. I’d rather 10 feet of red, 10 feet of silver and 10 feet of black. Plus, this new packaging is ugly!!! This is just confusing to the consumer, it won’t get to think, feel or even move feet. My hope is that comes to their senses quickly and goes back to the normal packaging. QUICKLY.

Coke has to return to capturing the magic with consumers. Think less. Feel more.

Here’s a presentation on what makes a Beloved Brand:

Beloved Brands: Who are we?

At Beloved Brands, we promise that we will make your brand stronger and your brand leaders smarter. We can help you come up with your brand’s Brand Positioning, Big Idea and Brand Concept. We also can help create Brand Plans that everyone in your organization can follow and helps to focus your Marketing Execution. We provide a new way to look at Brand Management, that uses a provocative approach to align your brand to the sound fundamentals of brand management.

We will make your team of Brand Leaders smarter so they can produce exceptional work that drives stronger brand results. We offer brand training on every subject in marketing, related to strategic thinking, analytics, brand planning, positioning, creative briefs, customer marketing and marketing execution.

To contact us, email us at graham@beloved-brands.com or call us at 416-885-3911. You can also find us on Twitter @belovedbrands.

People always ask me “So what is it that makes a Brand Leader good at advertising?”

I used to think they must be more creative. Or they are more in touch with creative people. Or better yet, they are a visionary.

I never really thought these answers satisfied me. Advertising is so much more than that.

In fact there are many things around advertising that have nothing to do with the creative. There needs to be a great Brand Plan, the Creative Brief should be tight yet rich with insight. Brand Leaders have to manage the process and stay on strategy and they should have an ability to select the right media. They should take risks. They have to be able to handle the stress of ambiguity against deadlines, and the pressure to make the numbers in the face of art. Advertising is half art, half science. They have to be able to give some freedom on execution, yet maintain a tight control on the strategy.

Brand Leaders must be good at giving good feedback, maybe even a bit fussy on details. Be nice though. They have to love the work and bring that emotion to the table. What about motivating the team? Not just motivating the creatives, but the planners, the account people, the editors and even the directors. Someone who is great at Advertising has to make decisions. They have to be able to walk in the shoes of the consumer, yet still live at the desk of the brand. They must have the ability to gain alignment with their own team and yet gain approval from the senior management of the company. They have to be able to sell the work. At all stages. The list goes on and on.

There are just so many things that are required to get good advertising. Being creative is a great start. But it is more.

So after thinking about this question for a few years, I finally nailed it:

A Brand Leader that is good at advertising is able to consistently get good advertising on the air, and keep bad advertising off the air.

It’s such a simple yet complicated answer. Almost as simple and complicated as David Ogilvy’s line “Clients get the work they deserve”. I know that is true, in every way that it is meant. I always ask Brand Leaders, “if you knew that how you showed up actually impacts the advertising, do you think you might show up differently?” I hope the answer is yes. But I’m not sure they do. Those great at advertising get it.

Sadly, there is an equally long list of things that make Brand Leaders bad at advertising. These days, there is so much learning on the job that people end up as the decision-maker in the room, sitting there trying to lead the advertising when they haven’t even properly trained on how to do it. Malcolm Gladwell says you’re an expert when you’ve had 10,000 hours. And yet, there are Brand Leaders are thrust into leading an Ad Campaign with 20, 30 or maybe 100 hours. And no training. Even those who are supposed to teach you haven’t been trained. So you are both learning. How can you consistently get good advertising on the air, managing such a complicated process when you’re still learning. On the job.

The 10 things good advertising should do

Here’s a starting point for you when you’re judging creative.

Set yourself apart.Beloved Brands must be different, better, cheaper. Or they are not around for very long. The story telling of the brand’s promise should help to separate the brand from the clutter of other brands that are stuck in our minds. And that starts with creative that feels different and of course makes the brand seem different.

Focused!A focused target, a focused message, a focused strategy against a focused communication idea, a focused media. The whole discipline of marketing is founded on focus, and yet Brand Leaders struggle most in this area. They always want that “just in case” option.

Keep the idea and communication very simple.Communication is not what is said, but what is heard. Too many people try to shout as many messages as they can in one ad. What does the consumer hear? A confusing mess. By throwing multiple messages you are just making the consumer do the work of deciding the most important message, because you couldn’t figure it out. My challenge to you is to stand up on a chair and yell your main message as though you are standing on top of a mountain. If you can’t YELL it out in one breath, then your idea is too complex. Or just too long. The Volvo Brand Manager gets to yell “Safety” in one clean simple breath. Can you do that?

Have a good selling idea.While Big Ideas break through, they also help you to be consistent, because you have to align your thinking to the Big Idea. You’ll see consistency over time, across mediums–paid, earned, social and search–and you’ll see it throughout the entire brand line up of sub brands. Consumers will start to connect to the big idea and they’ll begin to relate your brand with that big idea. Look at your ad: does it have a big idea?

Drive engagement: Too many Brand Leaders forget to engage the consumer. They get so fixated on saying their 7 messages that they figure the ability to capture attention is just advertising fluff.But it all starts with attention. The consumer sees 5,000 ads a day and will likely only engage in a handful. If you don’t capture their attention, no one will remember the brand name, your main message or any other reason to believe you might have.

Let the Visuals do the talking. With so many ads, you need to have a key visual that can capture the attention, link to your brand and communicate your message. The ‘see-say’ of advertising helps the consumers brain to engage, follow along and remember. As kids, we always love the pictures. We still do.

Sell the solution, not the product. Consumers use brands to solve problems in their lives. Your brand will be more powerful if it solves the problems of life. Figure out the consumers’ enemy and conquer it on their behalf. Consumers don’t care about what you do, until you care about what they need. No one has ever wanted a quarter-inch drill, they just need a quarter-inch hole.

Be Relevant with the Consumer.A beloved brand finds a way to matter to those who really care. It’s not only the right brand promise that matters, but the right communication of that promise. You can’t sell carpet cleaning to someone who only has hard wood floors. And you can’t sell a golf ball that goes 20 yards farther to someone who despises golf.

Make ads that are based on a consumer insight. Insights are not facts about your brand. That’s just you talking AT the consumer. Insights are something the consumer already knows but they didn’t realize that everyone felt that way. Insights enable consumers to see themselves in the situation and once you do that, the consumers might then figure the brand must be for them. Insights allow you to connect and turn the ad into a conversation.

Tell the story behind the brand. There should be richness in your brand’s purpose. Why did you start this brand? How does your brand help people? Why do you get up in the morning? Remember: people don’t buy what you do as much as they buy why you do it.

The ABC’S of Advertising

Another way to rephrase this list is through the ABC’S: Attention Branding Communication and Stickiness.

Attention:You have to get noticed in a crowded world of advertising. Consumers see 6000 ads per day, and will likely only engage in a few. If your brand doesn’t draw attention naturally, then you’ll have to force it into the limelight.

Branding:Ads that tell the story of the relationship between the consumer and the brand will link best. Even more powerful are ads that are from the consumers view of the brand. It’s not how much branding there is, but how close the brand fits to the climax of the ad.

Communication:Tapping into the truths of the consumer and the brand, helps you to tell the brand’s life story. Keep your story easy to understand. Communication is not just about what you say, but how you say it—because that says just as much.

Stickiness: Sticky ads help to build a consistent brand/consumer experience over time. In the end, brands are really about “consistency” of the promise you want to own. Brands have exist in the minds of the consumer.

Be a Better Client

If how you show up to the agency will produce better advertising work Then show up right.

Agencies should be treated like trusted partners, not suppliers. Engage them early asking for advice, not just telling them what to do and when. If you tell an agency what to do, there will only be one answer “YES”. But if you ask them what to do, there are three answers: yes, no or maybe. Seek their advice beyond advertising. Build a relationship directly with the creative teams. Be more than “just another client”.

Getting great advertising is a balance of freedom and control. Most Marketers allow too much FREEDOM on the strategy but want to exhibit CONTROL on the creative. It should be the reverse, you should control the strategy and give freedom on creative. Don’t go into a creative meeting with a pre-conceived notion as to what the ad should look like. Creative people are “in the box” problem solvers. What they don’t want a) blank canvas b) unclear problem and c) your solutions to the problem. Let them be in the box and find the solution for you. That’s what motivates them the most.

Advertising must do something for your brand. It must make the consumer think, feel or act differently than before they saw the ad.

To see the Beloved Brands workshop training presentation on gettingMarketing Execution click no the link below:

Beloved Brands: Who are we?

At Beloved Brands, we promise that we will make your brand stronger and your brand leaders smarter. We can help you come up with your brand’s Brand Positioning, Big Idea and Brand Concept. We also can help create Brand Plans that everyone in your organization can follow and helps to focus your Marketing Execution. We provide a new way to look at Brand Management, that uses a provocative approach to align your brand to the sound fundamentals of brand management.

We will make your team of Brand Leaders smarter so they can produce exceptional work that drives stronger brand results. We offer brand training on every subject in marketing, related to strategic thinking, analytics, brand planning, positioning, creative briefs, customer marketing and marketing execution.

To contact us, email us at graham@beloved-brands.com or call us at 416-885-3911. You can also find us on Twitter @belovedbrands.

To inspire greatness from your experts, give them your problems to solve. Never your solutions.

Article that we wrote for Advertising Age.

Very early on in my brand management career, I was at a dinner party with my in-laws, who began to grill me on what I did for a living. Brand management has never been easy to explain to those outside the industry. “So, are you the guy who comes up with the funny ads? No. Are you the guy who designs the cool new products? No.” After about 10 failed questions, they finally said, “So what do you do?” And I said “Nothing. I don’t really do anything. But I’m good at it.” They laughed, but they were likely scared that their daughter was marrying someone doomed to fail.

Remember when George from Seinfeld said, “Jerry, this show is about nothing.” That’s how I felt as a brand manager. Like George, I think what made me really good at my job is that I did nothing. Absolutely nothing. Over my 20 years of brand management, whenever I walked into a meeting, I used to whisper to myself, “You are the least knowledgeable person in the room. Use that to your advantage.”

The power was in the ability to ask clarification questions. When I was in with the scientists — following my C+ in tenth-grade chemistry — I was about as smart as the consumers I represented. I needed to make sure all the science was easy to explain. With my ad agencies, I finally figured out that I never had to solve problems. I just gave them my problems to solve. It became like therapy. Plus, with six years of business school — without one art class — what do I know about art? I was smart enough to know that I needed to make the most out of the experts I was paying.

While we don’t make the product, we don’t sell the product or create the ads, we do touch everything that goes into the marketplace and we make every decision. All of our work is done through other people. Our greatness as a brand leader has to come from the experts we engage, so they will be inspired to reach for their own greatness and apply it to our brand. Brand management has been built on a hub-and-spoke system, with a team of experts surrounding the generalist brand leader.

When I see brand managers of today doing stuff, I feel sorry for them. They are lost. I just saw that the CEO of Uber designed his own logo. Doesn’t he have better things to do? Brand leaders are not designed to be experts in marketing communications, experts in product innovation, or experts in selling the product. They are trained to be generalists — knowing enough to make decisions, but not enough to actually do the work.

Fifteen years ago, ad agencies broke apart the creative and the media departments into separate agencies, forcing the brand leader to step in and be the referee on key decisions. Right after that, the explosion of new digital media options that mainstream agencies were not ready to handle forced the brand leader to take another step in.

With the increasing speed of social media, brand leaders have taken one more step in. Three steps in, and brand leaders can’t find a way to step back again. Some brand leaders love stepping in too far so they can control the outcome of the creative process. However, if you are now doing all the work, then who is critiquing the work to make sure it fits the strategy? Pretty hard to think and do at the same time.

Brand leaders need to take a step back and let the creativity of execution unfold. I always say that it is okay to know exactly what you want, but you should never know until the moment you see it. As the client, I like to think of marketing execution as the perfect gift that you never thought to buy yourself. How we engage our experts can either inspire greatness or crush the spirit of creativity. From my experience, experts would prefer to be pushed than held back. The last thing experts want is to be asked for their expertise, and then told exactly what to do. There is a fine line between rolling up your sleeves to work alongside the experts and pushing the experts out of the way.

It is time to step back and assume your true role as a brand leader. Trust me, it is a unique skill to be able to inspire, challenge, question, direct and decide, without any expertise at all.

After all, I am an expert in doing nothing.

To read the original article that we wrote for Advertising Age, click on this link

At Beloved Brands, we lead workshops on everything connected to Brand Management, including Click on the Powerpoint file below to view:

Beloved Brands: Who are we?

At Beloved Brands, we promise that we will make your brand stronger and your brand leaders smarter. We can help you come up with your brand’s Brand Positioning, Big Idea and Brand Concept. We also can help create Brand Plans that everyone in your organization can follow and helps to focus your Marketing Execution. We provide a new way to look at Brand Management, that uses a provocative approach to align your brand to the sound fundamentals of brand management.

We will make your team of Brand Leaders smarter so they can produce exceptional work that drives stronger brand results. We offer brand training on every subject in marketing, related to strategic thinking, analytics, brand planning, positioning, creative briefs, customer marketing and marketing execution.

To contact us, email us at graham@beloved-brands.com or call us at416-885-3911. You can also find us on Twitter @belovedbrands.

Most new brand managers mistakenly think this role is about managing because they finally get a chance to manage a direct report. However, the bigger part of this role is the transition you need to make as you move from do-er to owner. Yes, you’ll get your first change to manage a direct report, but many times that effort can be a distraction from your chance to continue to learn and grow. Many brand managers are disheartened to find out they are a disaster with their first direct report, but I always remind them that they’ll finally get better by the fifth direct report.

Here are the five success factors for Brand Managers:

1. Ownership

A great Brand Manager takes ownership of the brand. Many BMs struggle with the transition from being the helper to being the owner. As you move into the job, you have to get away the idea of having someone hand you a project list. Not only should you have to make the project list, you should come up with the strategies from which the projects fall out of. A great Brand Manager talks in ideas in a telling sense, rather then an asking sense. It is great to be asking questions as feelers, but realize that most people are going to be looking to you for decisions. They will be recommending you will be deciding. When managing upwards be careful of asking questions—try to stick to solutions. You just gave up your ownership. Your director wants you to tell them what to do, and debate from there.

2. Strategic direction

A great Brand Manager provides a vision & strategies to match up to. Bring a vision to the brand. Push yourself to a well-articulated 5-10 year brand vision great. But a vision can be as simple as a rallying cry for the team. But you have to let everyone know where you want to go. The strategy that matches up to the vision becomes the road map for how to get there. As the brand owner, you become the steward of the vision and strategy. Everything that is off strategy has to be rejected. Communication of strategy is a key skill. Learn to think in terms of strategic pillars, with 3 different areas to help achieve your overall strategy. Having pillars constantly grounds you strategically, and is an easy way for communicating with the various functions. Each function may only have 1 strategic pillar but seeing how it all fits in is motivating.

3. Managing others
A great Brand Manager spends the effort to make their ABM as good as can be. Most BMs struggle with their first five direct reports. The key is to keep self evaluating and looking for ways to improve with each report. Most BMs struggle to shift from “do-er” to “coach. They think they can do it faster, so they may as well do it. They just become the “super ABM”. Many BMs fail to share the spot light, so it becomes hard to showcase the ABM. But the work of your ABM reflects 100% of how good of a manager you are. ABMs need feedback to get better—both the good and bad. I see to many BMs not giving enough feedback. And so many afraid of “going negative” so the ABM is left in the dark or left thinking they are doing a good job. Great BMs take the time to teach up front, give the ABM some room to try it out and then give hands-on feedback in real time. Use weekly meetings to give both positive feedback and address gaps. Brand Mangers should do QUARTERLY sit down performance reviews with their ABMs, who have the capacity to learn faster than annual reviews allows for.

4. Working the system
A great Brand Manager gets what they want and need. The organization is filled with groups, layers, external agencies, with everyone carrying a different set of goals and motivations. You can see how the organization works and appreciating what are are the motivations of various key stakeholders. You then use that knowledge to begin to work the system.You are starting to see key subject matter experts giving you their best. You understand their personal motivations and find a way to tap into those motivations as a way to ask people for their best. It might be an odd step, but from my experience a really motivating step. Very few people ask for “your best”.

5. Dealing with Pressure
A great Brand Manager can handle pressure: ambiguity, results, relationship time. Ambiguity is one of the hardest pressures. As a leader, patience and composure help you sort through the issues. The consequences of not remaining composed are a scared team and choosing quick decisions with bad results. Another big pressure is when the results don’t come in, it can be frustrating. Reach for your logic as you re-group. Force yourself to course correct, rather then continuing to repeat and repeat and repeat. Challenge team to “this is when we are needed” You will see pressure in relationships. Be pro-active in making the first move to build a relationship. Try to figure out what motivates and what annoys the person. Understand and reach for common ground, which most times is not that far away. At every level there is time pressure. It is similar to the ambiguity. Be organized, disciplined and work the system so it doesn’t get in your way. Be calm, so you continue to make the right decisions. Use time to your advantage.

The ten reasons that Brand Managers fail:

Struggle to make decisions

Not analytical enough

Can’t get along

Not good with ambiguity

Too slow and stiff

Bad people Manager

Poor communicators, with manager, senior management or partners

Never follow their Instincts

Can’t think strategically or write strategically

They don’t run the brand, they let the brand run them.

The reality is everyone will have 1 or 2 of these potential points, just naturally. You have to use your time as a Brand Manager to work on closing them. Especially if they come up in your performance review. At the Brand Manager stage, I hope you love the magic of marketing. Let it breathe and let it come to life. It is easy to lose your passion and try to do what your boss wants or do things to make short term numbers so you can get promoted. Those don not really work long term. My advice is do not just do the job, do it with all your passion. If you don’t love the work you do, then what consumer would ever love your brand.

Brand Manager role should be an amazing experience for you. Make the most of it.

At Beloved Brands, we lead workshops on everything connected to Brand Management, including Click on the Powerpoint file below to view:

Beloved Brands: Who are we?

At Beloved Brands, we promise that we will make your brand stronger and your brand leaders smarter. We can help you come up with your brand’s Brand Positioning, Big Idea and Brand Concept. We also can help create Brand Plans that everyone in your organization can follow and helps to focus your Marketing Execution. We provide a new way to look at Brand Management, that uses a provocative approach to align your brand to the sound fundamentals of brand management.

We will make your team of Brand Leaders smarter so they can produce exceptional work that drives stronger brand results. We offer brand training on every subject in marketing, related to strategic thinking, analytics, brand planning, positioning, creative briefs, customer marketing and marketing execution.

To contact us, email us at graham@beloved-brands.com or call us at 416-885-3911. You can also find us on Twitter @belovedbrands.

Have you ever notice that those people who say “we need to get everyone on the same page” rarely have ONE page? People who use the term “few bigger bets” always seem to be fans of those small little projects that deplete resources. And, the person who says they are “good at decision-making” usually struggle when facing a decision and then try to justify both options.

A well-written Brand Plan makes choices in how to allocate your brand’s limited resources to drive the biggest return. The plan gains approval from senior management around spending, strategies, tactics, goals and projects. The plan aligns, steers and inspiresall functional areas of the organization including marketing, sales, finance, supply chain, product development, human resources and any outside agencies. And lastly, the Brand Plan even helps the Brand Manager who wrote it, to stay focused on delivering on what they said they would deliver.

An effective Brand Plan answers where are we, why are we here, where could we be, how can we get there and what do we need to do. Once you answer these 5 strategic questions, you will see that you have your analysis, key issues, vision, goals strategies, execution and measurement.

While there is a lot of work with our planning process, you will end up with a Brand Plan on ONE PAGE.

Before you start in on working on the Brand Plan, we recommend that you write 2-3 bullet points for each of the 5 strategic questions. This provides an outline to ensure the overall flow of the plan. Below is our recommended strategic worksheet:

Elements of the Brand Plan

Following our Brand Plan we recommend building your plan around the following elements of the plan:

Situation Analysis

Key Issues

Vision/Purpose/Goals

Strategies

Execute

Measure

Situational Analysis

Start the planning process with a deep-dive business review that answers “where are we”, by looking at everything connected to the business including the category, consumer, competitors, channels and the brand. Here’s a link to our story on How to lead a deep-dive business review:

From the deep-dive business review, summarize what is driving the business, what’s holding it back and then lay out the risks and untapped opportunities. Try to focus on the top 3-4 points for each box below:

The simplicity of this analysis sets up a starting point of the Key Issues as the issues as you will want to continue/enhance the growth drivers, minimize or reverse the inhibitors, avoid the risks and take advantage of the opportunities.

Brand Vision

When I see brand teams struggling, they usually lack a vision. As Yogi Berra once said “if you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there”. The vision answers “where could we be” and becomes a beacon for everyone working on the brand. It is the one that defines your success. If you achieved it, everyone would feel proud.

We like to ask brand leaders: “if you woke up ten years from now and you were in a great mood because of what was happening on your business, what are the 2-3 things you would have achieved”. This gives you a straw dog vision, framed as a very large goal. We then provide some examples of the best-in-class vision statements to see if sparks some creativity in writing a final vision statement.

A good vision should scare you a little, but excite you a lot.It should be motivating and enticing to stretch your mind, while getting everyone focused. Ideally it is Qualitative (yet grounded in something) and quantitative (measurable). It is perfectly fine to embed a financial ($x) or share position (#1) element into it as long as it is important for framing the vision. The vision should easy for everyone to understand and rally around. It should stand at least 5-10 years or more. It should be a balance of aspiration (stretch) and reality (achievement)

A brand vision is not a positioning statement or strategic statement. These both come later in the plan. Try to be single-minded in the statement. You do not need to include everything. Make sure you haven’t achieved it already.

Key Issues

One tool we recommend with finding the key issues is to ask 4 questions that determine “why are you here”:

What is your current COMPETITIVE position?

What is the CORE STRENGTH your brand can win on?

How tightly CONNECTED is your consumer to your brand?

What is the current business SITUATION your brand faces?

Combine the deep dive analysis with the answers to these 4 questions and you will have a good start on your competitive, brand, consumer and situational issues.

Take the vision statement and ask “what are all the things getting in the way of achieving the vision?” Brainstorm every possible answer and then narrow down the list to the top 3-5 key issues. Once you have your top issues, write the key issues as questions, that sets up options for the strategy as the possible answers.

Strategies

Strategy is always about the “how to get there”. At the strategic level, you have to make choices. When Marketers come to a decision point that requires focus, too many try to justify a way to do both. You have to decide. The best strategic marketers never divide and conquer. They make the choices that help to focus and conquer. Marketers always face limited resources in terms of dollars, time, people and partnerships. They have to apply those limited resources against unlimited choices in target market, brand positioning, strategic options and activities. The best Marketers are able to limit the options through decision-making helps to match up to the limited resources.

The Brand Love Curve guides your strategy. We have created a hypothetical “Brand Love Curve” to assess how tightly connected brands are with their consumers. Brands move along the curve from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and finally becoming a Beloved with consumers becoming outspoken fans, where demand becomes desire, needs become cravings and thinking is replaced with feelings. Brands use their connection with consumers to become more powerful against the very consumers who love them, against the channels who carry them and against the competitors trying to beat them. With that added power, brands gain more profit through price, cost, share and market size.

Where you sit on the Brand Love Curve influences your next major strategic move. For a brand at the Indifferent stage, where consumers have no opinion of your brand, focus on establishing your brand in the consumers mind. You have to create an opinion. At the Like It stage, where consumers see you as a rational choice, there needs to be strategic work to separate your brand from the pack to generate a following. At the Love It stage, the focus should be on tugging at the heart-strings of your consumers to drive a deeper connection with those who love you. At the Beloved stage, the strategy has to continue the magic of the brand and get your loyalists to speak on the brand’s behalf. Mobilize the brand fans as advocates.

Use the Brand Love Curve to focus your strategy. While you will come up with your own unique strategies, we have used the Brand Love Curve to map out 16 core brand strategies to begin playing with.

The biggest strategic flaw of most brand plans is trying to drive penetration and usage frequency at the same time. This is a classic case of trying to get away with doing two things instead of picking just one. Look at how different these two options really are and you will see the drain on the resources you will experience by trying to do both. A penetration strategy gets someone with very little experience with your brand to likely consider dropping their current brand to try you once and see if they like it. A usage frequency strategy gets someone who knows your brand to change their behavior in relationship to your brand, either changing their current life routine or substituting your brand into a higher share of the occasions. By doing both, you will be targeting two types of consumers at the same time, you will have two main messages and you will divide your resources against two groups of activities that have very little synergy. If you are really strategic, pick one, not two.

As we wrote our key issues in question format, then the strategy becomes the answer. Look how they match up.

Tactics and Marketing Execution

“What do we need to do to get there” matches up marketing execution activity to the brand strategy, looking at communicating the brand story, managing the consumer towards the purchase moment, launching new product innovation and delivering the brand experience. We use our Big Idea to drive each of these key areas of the brand. To read more, click on this link:

Marketing Execution has to make your brand stronger. It has to create a bond with consumers who connect with the soul of the brand, it establishes your brand’s reputation based on a distinct positioning and it influences consumers to alter their behavior to think, feel or act, making the brand more powerfully connected, eventually leading to higher sales, share and profit.

Start with a Consumer Buying System that can match your brand’s Marketing execution to where your consumer stands with your brand.

Focus your marketing activities by prioritizing on return on investment and effort (ROI and ROE). For each strategy, you want to find the “Big Easy”. Start by putting all your ideas on to post it notes, then map each idea onto the grid as to whether they will have a BIG versus SMALL impact on the business, and whether they are EASY versus DIFFICULT. The top ideas will be in the BIG EASY top right corner. The goal of this activity is to narrow your focus to the best 3 activities.

A good marketing execution plan should have:

Brand budget

Goals

Calendar of activity

Project work plans

A plan is not complete without project plans that include the project owner, project budget, goals, milestones and hurdles.

Bringing the Plan together

The power of 3’s: As we said earlier, the plan is about making decisions. We recommend that you narrow your effort down to 3 strategies and then 3 tactics for each strategy. That means 9 core projects for each brand to focus their resources on during the year. Compare the subtle difference that 5 strategies with 5 tactics for each strategy explodes into 25 projects that might cripple your brand’s resources. By doing less number, you will be focusing your limited resources on making each project has a big impact. When your team lacks time to do everything with full passion, they run the risk of turning out OK work that fails to connect with your consumers.

Full Brand Plan

While we love the Plan on a Page, we have also created a 20-page brand plan format that lays out everything a plan should include.

Key Terms

Vision: What do you want your brand to be in the next 5-10 years? Vision gives everyone on the brand a clear direction, it should be measurable (quantitative) and motivating (qualitative). It should push you so much that it scares you a little, but excites you a lot.

Goals: What do you need to achieve? Specific measures of brand health and wealth, related to consumer/customer behavioral changes, metrics of key programs, performance targets or milestones on the pathway to the vision. It’s the brand scoreboard.

Key Issues: What is getting the way from achieving your vision/goals? Deep analysis highlights what’s driving and holding brand back, as well as future risks and untapped opportunities. Issues are asked as a question to provide the problem to which strategies become the solution.

Strategies: How can we get there? Strategies are the “How” you will win the market. Choices based on market opportunities, using consumers, competitors or situational. Strategies should have a pin-pointed focus providing a breakthrough on the pathway to the brand vision.

Tactics:What do we need to do to execute the strategy? Framed completely by strategy, tactical choices deploy your limited resources against brand projects, the most efficient way to drive a high ROI.

At Beloved Brands, we lead workshops to help teams build their Brand Plan, helping the team analyze the business and then work to define their vision, goals, issues, strategies and tactics. Click on the Powerpoint file below to view:

Beloved Brands: Who are we?

At Beloved Brands, we promise that we will make your brand stronger and your brand leaders smarter. We can help you come up with your brand’s Brand Positioning, Big Idea and Brand Concept. We also can help create Brand Plans that everyone in your organization can follow and helps to focus your Marketing Execution. We provide a new way to look at Brand Management, that uses a provocative approach to align your brand to the sound fundamentals of brand management.

We will make your team of Brand Leaders smarter so they can produce exceptional work that drives stronger brand results. We offer brand training on every subject in marketing, related to strategic thinking, analytics, brand planning, positioning, creative briefs, customer marketing and marketing execution.

To contact us, email us at graham@beloved-brands.com or call us at 416-885-3911. You can also find us on Twitter @belovedbrands.

In 1996, the Apple brand was bordering on bankruptcy. They were basically just another computer company, without any real point of difference. Years of overlooked opportunities, flip-flop strategies, and a mind-boggling disregard for market realities caught up with Apple, Windows 95 has seriously eroded the Mac’s technology edge. Apple was rapidly becoming a minor player in the computer business with shrinking market shares, price cuts and declining profits. This was the year before even contemplating the return of Steve Jobs, really showcasing how badly Apple was run through the 1990s. Most importantly, Apple had no brand Big Idea to guide everything they do.

Apple is the role model for Brand Love

The most beloved brand of the modern economy is clearly Apple, which has created a cult-like following that motivates masses of people to flock to Apple stores around the world for every new Apple launch. Some of the news footage we see of the recent iPhone or iPad launches resembles footage we saw of The Beatles back in the 1960s.

Every brand needs a Big Idea to ensure consistency in the consumers mind as they notice, test, decide and experience the brand. The brand needs to be able to tell their story in 7 seconds, 60 seconds, 30 minutes and over the lifetime of the brand. We use a Big Idea Blueprint, starting off by describing the brand as to the products and services that we sell and matches that up to the external brand reputation among consumers. We describe what internal beacons are within the brand that would help guide the entire internal brand culture and organization that supports the brand as well as the brand character as it touches consumers. We would also describe the role of the brand, about how it connects the brand with consumers, the link between the internal soul and the external reputation. Here’s how the Apple Big Idea is generated using this tool.

Apple is unlike any brand in our history and role model for how a brand should act. Their sales growth and profitability reflects how well the strategy can work. Everything Apple does is focused around the Big Idea that: “Apple makes technology so simple that everyone can be part of the future.”Here’s how that Big Idea plays out across all 5 of the consumer touch-points:

Apple’s supporting brand promise is to be on the side of consumers and make things so simple, so intuitive, to think like a consumer not an engineer, so that everyone can feel smarter and feel more engaged. The Apple organization culture is based on the value which Steve Jobs said many times: “You have to start with the consumer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around”. There is an urban legend story Jobs told of a boy in the Amazon Rain forest who could not read or write, but figured out how to use the iPad within a few minutes. As Apple is on the side of consumers, they believe that technology doesn’t have to be frustrating. If you have ever banged your fists on top of a computer or printer, then you are the ideal consumer for an Apple product.

In termsof telling the brand story, Apple takes on the consumers’ enemy of “frustration” directly, fuel for the fire of the famous “I’m a Mac. And I’m a PC” ads of 2005. To me, those ads capture the brand’s soul on film. Internally, those TV ads were a rallying cry for the Apple culture. But if you go back in time to 1977, we still see that simplicity and doing more throughout every campaign.

The R&D team has kept finding new innovations around simplicity, whether through home/office computers, portables, mobile, entertainment or social platforms, they all line up under the Big Idea of simplicity. The beauty of using Apple is that everything works in a similar intuitive fashion, and there is an integration between them that makes it easier.

Apple manages the purchase moment extremely well, especially within their own stores. They allow consumers to play with products right in the store taking them on a “test drive” and get comfortable with how it works. They provide training and a genius bar to offer technical support whether through a class or 15-minute appointment with an Apple expert. The in-store sales colleagues are there as consultants, with avery soft-sell approach.

In terms of the brand experience, Apple believes you should be engaged right away, be able do more and get more from your devices. There is no value in having all these bits and bytes at your finger tips if you cannot use them. One small integrated feature I love is that I have recently started to use my iPhone as my remote control for my presentations through my MacBook. The iPad has been a hugely successful product in stretching the target market into both the youth and senior markets, enabling everyone to be part of the future.

As Apple has achieved an extremely tight bond with a loyal mass of followers, they use the tight consumer bond to generate power that they quietly wield in the market. Apple’s retail network of stores generates twice the sales per square foot of any retailer in the world, yet it is a very soft-sell environment. I was recently on a double-decker bus tour of New York City, and when the bus went past the 5th Avenue Apple flagship store, half the bus stood up to take a photo. Apple has such a power over the supplier network with an array of engineers following extremely tight procedures. They have a power over the media, generating over $2 billion worth of free media each year. Apple fans want to work at Apple, many times giving up lucrative jobs just to be part of the brand.

Apple extrapolates the power they generate intoprofit, with their incredible financial performance over the last 15 years. Apple generates significant price premiums, relatively lower cost of goods and moderate marketing spend ratios to hold their margins at healthy levels for a technology firm. Apple has entered many new categories over the past 15 years, each time their army of loyal fans has followed, moving into laptops, phones, tablets and the music business. In each segment, Apple continues to gain share to drive volumes. The higher margins and higher volumes make for a beautiful profit statement. Even though Apple gives the perception of an extremely friendly brand who is on the side of the consumer, they are now a huge mass market corporate brand, with a market capitalization of $500-600 billion, which 2-3 times the value of companies like Coke, Procter & Gamble, Pfizer and IBM. If you invested a mere $10,000 in 2005, you would have $240,000 a decade later.

Apple is a perfect example of how a brand can turn Brand love into power and profits

At Beloved Brands, here is an expanded version of the Apple Case Study, including how Apple’s Big Idea guides everything they do, how to develop Apple’s Brand Strategy Road Map and how Apple’s brand love drives power and profit. Click on the Powerpoint file below to view:

Beloved Brands: Who are we?

At Beloved Brands, we promise that we will make your brand stronger and your brand leaders smarter. We can help you come up with your brand’s Brand Positioning, Big Idea and Brand Concept. We also can help create Brand Plans that everyone in your organization can follow and helps to focus your Marketing Execution. We provide a new way to look at Brand Management, that uses a provocative approach to align your brand to the sound fundamentals of brand management.

We will make your team of Brand Leaders smarter so they can produce exceptional work that drives stronger brand results. We offer brand training on every subject in marketing, related to strategic thinking, analytics, brand planning, positioning, creative briefs, customer marketing and marketing execution.

To contact us, email us at graham@beloved-brands.com or call us at 416-885-3911. You can also find us on Twitter @belovedbrands.

As a consumer-centric Marketer, I believe that everything has to start and end with the consumer in mind. Another way to phrase that is there is only one source of revenue: the consumer. At the core of any brand is consistency. If we go back over a hundred years ago, in a much simpler shopping experience, brands came about as a stamp that helped to separate itself from the basic commodity. Before there was Kellogg’s, you could still get cereal but from week to week or from store to store, there was no consistency. With Kellogg’s entry, it really was a statement that leaves consumers knowing that “you can expect these to always be the same”. Those early brands such as Ivory, Kellogg’s or Nestle signaled an expected consistency for the consumer.

Consumers first connect with a brand’s Big Idea, which should be an outer reflection of the Brand Soul. The role of the Big Idea is to help simplify brand messages that makes it easily understood and remembered. The Big Idea must be unique, own-able and motivating. It must gain a quick entry, be layered easily and have longevity over the life of the brand. The brand’s Big Idea helps to tell project consistency over the first 7 seconds as they notice, the 60 seconds they need to test the idea, the 30 minutes of time they may use to make a decision on buying and over the lifetime of the brand as they experience the brand. To read more on creating a Big Idea for your brand, click on this hyperlink:

As we map out how consumers buy and experience brands, we have created 5 main consumer touch-points that will impact their decisions on whether to engage, buy, experience and become a fan. Our five consumer touch-points we use are:

Brand Promise: Brands need to create a simple brand promise that separates your brand from competitors, based on being better, different or cheaper.

Brand Story: Use your brand story to motivate consumers to think, feel or act, while beginning to own a reputation in the mind and hearts of consumers.

Innovation: Fundamentally sound product, staying at the forefront of trends and using technology to deliver on your brand promise.

Purchase Moment:The moment of truth as consumers move through the purchase cycle and use channels, messaging, processes to make the final decision.

Brand Experience:Turn the usage of your product into an experience that becomes a ritual and favorite part of their day.

To ensure a consistency in how consumers view your brand, whether that is the first touch-point or the most recent, all 5 touch-points should be aligned under the brand’s Big Idea.

As we start mapping the idea to the five consumer touch-points, we can build the organization around the Big Idea, impacting your brand’s positioning, communication, product development, selling, the operations and the culture that back the organization. With our fictional brand “Gray’s Cookies”, we can see below our Brand Idea Map that takes Gray’s Big Idea of “the best tasting yet guilt-free pleasure” and shows how that works across all 5 of the consumer touch-points.

Taking this one step further, the Big Idea should drive every part of your organization. It is my view that R&D, Finance, Planning, Marketing Communication, Sales should all be looking to the Big Idea for guidance. While the Brand Vision is what you want to achieve, the Big Idea is what you want to project.

I was working with a client on the brand positioning and the development of a Big Idea, and the Ad Agency at the table said “let’s take this to our Creative Director and see how well it would execute in the market”. And I said “Sure, but we should also take it to the head of HR, R&D and Sales to see what they think of it”. More and more of the world’s best brands are starting to understand that brand is equally an external and internal story. The best brands are moving from just selling product under their brands to creating experiences that go far beyond the product. Are people only going to Starbucks because of the coffee? Starbucks now goes far beyond coffee. In fact, we see Starbucks as providing a personal moment of escape from a hectic life, between work and home. It’s just as much about the conversation with the barista, the nice leather chairs and the people I might meet as it as about the coffee.

When it comes time to the Marketing Execution, the Big Idea should guide everything you do, whether that is paid media with advertising, earned media through public relations, social media through Facebook, Twitter or conversations, search media, your home page where you might share information, influence or close the sale, experiential Marketing that brings the brand experience to life and the purchase media that helps manage the consumer towards the purchase moment.

The brand’s strategic Big Idea should allow consistent delivery of the brand story with a big creative idea and media execution.

A brand finds equilibrium when the BRAND SOUL, BIG IDEA and REPUTATION are all the same.

At Beloved Brands, we lead workshops to help teams find their Brand Positioning, helping the team define their target, benefits and reason to believe so they can find a space that is unique, own-able and motivating. Click on the Powerpoint file below to view:

Beloved Brands: Who are we?

At Beloved Brands, we promise that we will make your brand stronger and your brand leaders smarter. We can help you come up with your brand’s Brand Positioning, Big Idea and Brand Concept. We also can help create Brand Plans that everyone in your organization can follow and helps to focus your Marketing Execution. We provide a new way to look at Brand Management, that uses a provocative approach to align your brand to the sound fundamentals of brand management.

We will make your team of Brand Leaders smarter so they can produce exceptional work that drives stronger brand results. We offer brand training on every subject in marketing, related to strategic thinking, analytics, brand planning, positioning, creative briefs, customer marketing and marketing execution.

To contact us, email us at graham@beloved-brands.com or call us at 416-885-3911. You can also find us on Twitter @belovedbrands.

How can we explain Jeb Bush spending over $100 Million and getting very little back in return. If we look deeper, we can see that he has done a very poor job in engaging with voters through social media.

The US election has always fascinated me, even as a Canadian. Heck, we even have a Canadian in the race this year. Just kidding. As crazy as the current election has become, it has almost become entertainment. I’m not here to talk about politics at all. As Marketers, we can certainly learn from how the candidates are utilizing social media.

While the 2008 election taught us that Social Media can help you win the election, the 2016 election might be teaching us that traditional media may not help you win at all.

Back in 2008, Obama’s team was ahead of the social media curve using 2.5 million Facebook supporters, 115,000 Twitter followers (a lot back then) and 50 Million views on YouTube. John McCain was no where on social media.

This year might be a great case study in how spending more on traditional media might not mean that much. Reportedly, Jeb Bush has already spent over $100 Million and yet has come in sixth place in Iowa (behind Rand Paul, who dropped out) and he is likely headed for a similar result in New Hampshire. Bush has done an awful job on social media, weak on both Twitter and Facebook. His lack of engagement with voters might be a better explanation as to why he is doing so poorly. Below is how the candidates fare on the two social platforms. Trump has 6 million followers on both Twitter and Facebook, while Bush has a 400,000 on each.

So far in the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump has spent more money on “Make America Great” hats than he has spent on Advertising. As we all know, he is the most actively engaged on-line, tweeting on an hourly basis–with 30,000 tweets, about 10x as many as the other candidates. Trump’s style of Tweets is like the car-crash that you cannot turn away from. I will regularly peak in on his just to see what he’s said now. Most days I’m in shock as to what he’s been able to get away with, but now I’m starting to expect that this is all part of the frustrated brand that he has created.

As expected, Hillary Clinton’s tweets are safe and calculating. There’s no reason to follow or look at her account, unless you want the odd link to one of her policy papers. With Bernie Sanders, his account says that Tweets ending in B are from him, but the rest are from staffers. When I eye-ball the last few hundred tweets, I did not see one signed with a B. So basically, signing up for Bernie’s Twitter means you are fully engaged with a 23-year-old intern. One of the newest social media vehicle that some of the candidates have embraced is Instagram. Look at the chart below, we can see that only 3 candidates have done anything with Instagram. Poor Jeb Bush has 4,000 followers, slightly behind Trump’s 980,000 followers.

In terms of earned media, Trump has managed to dominate the news cycle, garnering 38% of the total media mentions. Bush has only grabbed about 4% of the earned media. The media seems to be endlessly talking about Trump, half the time confused. It seems the media has tried to anoint various candidates instead of Trump, including front-runner Scott Walker, followed by front-runner Jeb Bush, followed by new front-runner Dr Ben Carson, followed by new front-runner Ted Cruz, and followed by new surging candidate Marco Rubio.

I can’t predict who will win the 2016 election. But I can predict that elections will never be the same. Forget politics for a minute. What can your brand learn from the use of Social Media in the 2016 US election campaign? How can you leverage the efforts of social media to counter the high cost of paid media? How can you leverage earned media to be part of the story? Does it do any good to have a social media account and not do anything with it?

This election year appears to get more interesting every week.

At Beloved Brands, we lead workshops to help teams plan their Marketing Execution, whether that is through communication, managing the purchase moment, innovation or creating experiences. Click on the Powerpoint file below to view:

Beloved Brands: Who are we?

At Beloved Brands, we promise that we will make your brand stronger and your brand leaders smarter. We can help you come up with your brand’s Brand Positioning, Big Idea and Brand Concept. We also can help create Brand Plans that everyone in your organization can follow and helps to focus your Marketing Execution. We provide a new way to look at Brand Management, that uses a provocative approach to align your brand to the sound fundamentals of brand management.

We will make your team of Brand Leaders smarter so they can produce exceptional work that drives stronger brand results. We offer brand training on every subject in marketing, related to strategic thinking, analytics, brand planning, positioning, creative briefs, customer marketing and marketing execution.

To contact us, email us at graham@beloved-brands.com or call us at 416-885-3911. You can also find us on Twitter @belovedbrands.

The life of the modern consumers has changed dramatically, impacting what it takes for brands to win. In today’s crowded branded marketplace, the modern consumers see 7,000 brand messages a day. The fastest thing our brains do is reject brand messages. Brands need an entry point to gain permission to the consumer’s brain.

After decades of being burned by false promises, modern consumers are naturally cynical and constantly doubting brands. They test the brand by asking detailed questions. Brands need a solid story that closes off any doubts consumers may have.

Modern consumers like to take control over their buying process as they move from consideration to search and finally to a purchase moment. Brands need to move with consumers through to the purchase moment.

As the modern consumer experiences the brand, they either accept or reject the promise. Consumers are more loyal to brands to which they share a common purpose and shared values. Brands need to create experiences that match the brand story

The organizational culture that backs up the brands has also changed

The organizational support behind brands can be complex. Various departments have differing motivations and misaligned goals. Brands need an internal beacon to rally the motivations of their employees.

The best brands are beginning to realize that it is the people of their organization that deliver the brand story, innovation, purchase moment and experience Together, they create a bond with consumers. Everyone needs a common understanding and talking points of the brand. Brands need to lay out the detail so everyone can know the impact they have.

Organizations need to break down silos to ensure various groups move in the same direction, each with unique solutions that line up with other groups. Brands need a plan that gets everyone on the same page with strategies, tactics and project plans.

It is the culture of the organization who delivers the experience of the brand. People are the face of the brand, and will be the source of creating loyalty with consumers. The culture under the brand is quickly becoming the new product that consumers connect with.

The role of the Big Idea

A Big Idea for your brand ensures consistency in the consumers mind as they notice, test, decide and experience the brand. The brand needs to be able to tell their story in 7 seconds, 60 seconds, 30 minutes and over the lifetime of the brand.

Have you ever gone to a party where you “weren’t yourself” that night? That’s when the outer projection of your image does not match with your inner views of what you are comfortable with. It is the same thing for brands. A brand finds equilibrium when the internal BRAND SOUL, matches up perfectly to the external REPUTATION that it creates in the market place. The role of the BIG IDEA is to unite these two and ensure you are working every touch-point of the internal organization and external consumer face with the same brand messaging.

The Big Idea should serve to simplify the brand message with an outward expression of the Brand Soul, which reflects the purpose, values, beliefs and motivations that form the brand culture.

In this crowded marketplace, the first connection point for consumers has to be the Big Idea as they are only willing to give a brand 7 seconds to capture their attention. As consumers experience the brand for the first time, they either accept or reject idea whether it matches up to their expectations based on their first impression from the big idea. Consumers who are continually satisfied with the brand experience start to become loyal and develop a bond with brand. They will build routines or rituals around the brand. Should the brand become one of their favorites, we will see consumers transform their brand love into a reputation they spread within their social network.

Are you starting to see that the Big Idea has to not only be the first connection point for consumers, but rather every connection point? The Big idea must be unique, own-able and motivating. It must gain a quick entry, be layered easily and have longevity over the life of the brand.

While I love the JUST DO IT tagline for Nike, that is a creative big idea, not a strategic big idea.The “Just Do it” tagline does not guide the design of next year’s shoe, the overall experience you are trying to create with the brand, it does not help decide who to hire to work the retail stores, or what celebrity athlete to hire. The strategic Big Idea for Nike is: “Nike pushes your athletic boundaries beyond what you thought was possible, so you can win on your own terms.” A slogan never drives your brand strategy. But a great brand strategy should drive your slogan. We need to stop thinking that Brand Strategy is only about the external consumer view, as it is equally about the internal culture and operations. Next time your ad agency says “Let’s vet the brand concept past our creative people”, you should say “sure, let me invite our HR manager to attend that discussion”. By the way, if you are an ad agency, have you ever asked to speak to someone in HR?

Here are four examples of strategic Big Ideas, that would help me to communicate with consumers, build innovation, manage the purchase moment and build experiences around the brand:

Creating the Big Idea

To ensure we have an idea that is big enough to guide every part of the organization, we start by describing the brand as to the products and services that we sell and matches that up to the external brand reputation among consumers. We describe what internal beacons are within the brand that would help guide the entire internal brand culture and organization that supports the brand as well as the brand character as it touches consumers. We would also describe the role of the brand, about how it connects the brand with consumers, the link between the internal soul and the external reputation.

The Big Idea Blueprint below shows everything that must be considered for creating the Big Idea.

To describe the product we recommend that you start by figuring out exactly what you do, in the most passionate words that would excite you and your consumers. This should be matched up to the Brand Reputation to ensure the external and internal alignment. You should assess how your most engaged and loyal consumers would view your offering, to ensure it attracts, excites and engages them in a way that changes their behavior. From there, you should move to the Internal Brand Beacon, which helps to create an internal rallying cry for everyone to follow that reflects the purpose, values, motivations to deliver the brand you created. This should be matched up to the Brand Character, which are the emotional characteristics, and personality traits that help consumers connect passionately with the brand. The role of the brand serves as the bridge between the internal and external brand. Assume a role for how you can ensure consumers can get the most from what you do.

Step One

Using our fictional Grays Cookie brand, under the five sections of the Big Idea blue print, we brainstorm 10-15 words for each area, then vote to narrow down to the best 3-4 words.

Step Two

Take the best 3-4 words for each section and build key phrases that summarize each area.

This forces you to almost write a big idea for each unique section of the Blue Print. It also serves to stimulate the creative writing juices on the team, which will help in step three

Step Three

Using the 5 areas to inspire you, try to write a summary Big Idea statement that captures everything you have worked on.

Creating a Brand Concept

When writing the Brand concept you should use the work from the Brand Positioning Statement and the Big Idea blue print.

To read our Beloved Brands story with a step-by-step process on writing a Brand Positioning Statement, click on this link:

If you have done a good amount of work on the Brand Positioning and created a Big Idea, you will see how easy it is to write winning concepts.

When writing the brand concept, the main headline should capture the big idea of your brand. Obviously the headline is the first thing consumers see, so it should contain the big idea that you want your brand to stand behind. Use the opening statement of the concept to connect quickly with your target consumers by starting with their enemy or insight. I love using the enemy because it can be a very arresting way to really make the consumer say “That’s me”. Bring the main benefit to life in a compelling promise statement. I prefer it to have an emotional/rational balance in the promise. At the very least, the emotion modifies the rational. The promise statement then forces us to bring in the two reasons to believe (RTBs) to help back that up. Avoid a laundry list of support points, only putting what you could realistically put into an advertisement or package. I like to add a motivating call to action at the end to help prompt purchase intent. Adding a supporting visual is optional, but it helps connect with consumers.

At Beloved Brands, we lead workshops to help teams find their Brand Positioning, helping the team define their target, benefits and reason to believe so they can find a space that is unique, own-able and motivating. Click on the Powerpoint file below to view:

Beloved Brands: Who are we?

At Beloved Brands, we promise that we will make your brand stronger and your brand leaders smarter. We can help you come up with your brand’s Brand Positioning, Big Idea and Brand Concept. We also can help create Brand Plans that everyone in your organization can follow and helps to focus your Marketing Execution. We provide a new way to look at Brand Management, that uses a provocative approach to align your brand to the sound fundamentals of brand management.

We will make your team of Brand Leaders smarter so they can produce exceptional work that drives stronger brand results. We offer brand training on every subject in marketing, related to strategic thinking, analytics, brand planning, positioning, creative briefs, customer marketing and marketing execution.

To contact us, email us at graham@beloved-brands.com or call us at 416-885-3911. You can also find us on Twitter @belovedbrands.

We have looked at all the Super Bowl Ads over the years, and used Ad Meter results to narrow the list and then our own judgement on how it did on the ABC’S: Attention, Branding Communication and Stickiness. At Beloved Brands, we believe that Marketing Execution combines Branded Breakthrough (how you say it) and Moveable Messaging (what you say). Taking this one step further, the execution has to breaks through the clutter (Attention) and link closely to the brand name (Branding). The execution must communicate the main message (Communication) and makes brand seem different (Stickiness)

Here are the top 10 Super Bowl ads of all time. Enjoy.

Coke “Mean Joe Greene” (1979)

Bit of that 1970s “cheese” for you, but I remember this one from my teens. Strong on Communication through story-telling and Stickiness. The spot has become as iconic as the drink itself.

Apple 1984 (1984)

Great story of this ad in the Steve Jobs book–how the board never wanted to run it and they lied about the media commitment. This was one of the first big Super Bowl ads, that changed the way advertisers saw the Super Bowl slots. Movie Quality of the filming does a great job in gaining Attention and Stickiness as it has stood the test of time for 30 years. A bit weak on communication, but that might have more to do with the lack of things to say about the product, so they led more with brand image and attitude as the core distinctiveness.

McDonald’s Jordan vs Bird (1992)

This one had a lot of break through and left us with the phrase “nothing but net”. With these two celebrities at their peak, it was high on Attention, strong story telling, pretty good branding and had some phrasing that had some stickiness for years

Cindy Crawford “New Can” (1992)

Not much needs to be said about this one, other than that they repeated this 10 years later and she still looked the same. Definitely Attention getting with a very simple message Communication that helped drive Brand link. Not a lot of stickiness for consumers.

Budweiser: WASSUP! (1999)

The simplicity of this one, but it really does capture a male-bonding insight of how guys do interact with their buddies. Hilarious ad was exceptional at Attention and certainly Stickiness as everyone was saying this phrase for a year. Didn’t really communicate much.

Budweiser 9/11 Tribute (2002)

Even after all these years, this one might bring a tear to your eye. Months after the tragedy of 9/11, this one takes the American icons of Budweiser and the Clydesdales marching through the streets of America and gives a nice salute to NYC. High on Attention, with deep emotions, strong Brand cues, and certainly the story telling aided the Communication. Even though only shown once, high on Stickiness as it still really brings back those emotions.

Google “Parisian” (2009)

Beautiful ad that shows the power of Google as an enabling brand to your life. A great example of using quietness to drive Attention. The Branding is obviously incredible, but as it links nicely to the story telling that Communicates how Google is part of everyone’s life. The emotional feelings certainly aid the Stickiness. This is one of the best Ads I’ve ever seen.

Snicker’s Betty White (2010)

Whatever Betty was paid, she’s made millions since because of this spot. Quickly after this one, the power of a Facebook page demanded that Betty host Saturday Night Live. A great little spot that was incredible on Attention and Stickiness. The Communication is a Big Idea for the brand and kick-started a campaign that has lasted for years, even if Snicker’s has yet to fully capture in their pool outs on this campaign.

Chrysler Eminem (2011)

I love the tone of this spot, perfect casting with Eminem–the rawness of his voice, attitude and authenticity. The repeat in 2012 using Clint Eastwood was a good spot as well, but not quite up to the Eminem version. “Imported from Detroit” is a very big idea. Love it. High on Attention and Communication. The only problem is that Chrysler hasn’t invested enough in this idea since.

Ram “farmer” (2013)

One of my fav ads of all time, and takes such a huge artistic risk by launching such a quiet ad that really tugs at the heart, when most other brands are doing slapstick ads. The shrill voice of Paul Harvey captures the Attention, especially against all the slapstick ads. The Communication of “Americana” comes through, and whether you’re a farmer or not, if you are a hard-working American, this should be your truck!!!

Good luck to this year’s Super Bowl, as many of us will be watching the TV ads as much as we’re watching the game. The power of the venue as the Super Bowl out draws the final game of the other 3 sports (Baseball, Basketball and Hockey) combined. Let’s hope for a great game and maybe one great ad to add to this list.

At Beloved Brands, we run a workshops to train marketers in all aspects of marketing from strategic thinking, analysis, writing brand plans, creative briefs and reports, judging advertising and media. To see a WORKSHOP ON MARKETING EXECUTION, click on the Powerpoint presentation below:

Beloved Brands: Who are we?

At Beloved Brands, we promise that we will make your brand stronger and your brand leaders smarter. We can help you come up with your brand’s Brand Positioning, Big Idea and Brand Concept. We also can help create Brand Plans that everyone in your organization can follow and helps to focus your Marketing Execution. We provide a new way to look at Brand Management, that uses a provocative approach to align your brand to the sound fundamentals of brand management.

We will make your team of Brand Leaders smarter so they can produce exceptional work that drives stronger brand results. We offer brand training on every subject in marketing, related to strategic thinking, analytics, brand planning, positioning, creative briefs, customer marketing and marketing execution.

To contact us, email us at graham@beloved-brands.com or call us at 416-885-3911. You can also find us on Twitter @belovedbrands.